


Electromagnetic

by Gabri



Category: Gravity Falls, ParaNorman (2012), Parapines - Fandom
Genre: Developing Friendship, Developing Relationship, M/M, Paranormal Investigations, Slow Build, high voltage syndrome
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-16
Updated: 2013-03-16
Packaged: 2017-12-05 11:56:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/723024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gabri/pseuds/Gabri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Norman develops electrical powers, a few choice secrets are being kept, and Dipper, as usual, can not stay away from danger.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A recent topic in my psychology class was ESP, effects on the electromagnetic plane, and near-death experience phenomena. 
> 
> So the next thing I know I’m Parapines fanfiction. ;___;
> 
> I tend to write slow build so the slash is barely there but….yes…slow build <3

The first time, Dipper hadn’t even noticed him.

The Mystery Shack had it’s share of starry-eyed visitors, and besides, whenever they were roped into helping out it was always more worthwhile passing the hours catching glances at the bored, beautiful profile of Wendy’s face as she thumbed through a magazine.

Mabel drummed her fingers tightly on her brother’s arm, her noise of interest breaking through his wandering thoughts. “Who is _that?_ Kind of like a _dashing stranger_ , huh, Dip? Look, look, his shoelaces have teeth on them!” She snorted with amusement.

“Mabel, please, I can’t take another crush.” Dipper warned, sparing an incredulous glance at the kid’s feet. She was right, though - there were little razor-tooth patterns all along the edges, like the mouth of a piranha. Wow. Where does a person even _buy_ those? “Let him be, he’s just…”

Dipper trailed off, squinting at the kid, who was fiddling with a box full of watches as if pretending to be interested. There wasn’t anything _particularly_ ab-normal about him except for his hair, which was sticking straight up wildly as if threaded with electricity. He was small - Dipper’s age - swimming in a hoodie two sizes too big and turning his face somewhat purposefully away from the counter.

And…was he _whispering?_

He _was._ Dipper leaned in despite himself, straining to hear…there were pauses thrown in, as if an invisible person were chiming in with their own words, like a natural conversation…but what was he _saying…?_

“Can I help you?” Mabel burst out eagerly, causing the boy to jump and whirl around to face her, a watch still clutched uselessly between his fingers. His eyes were a shock to see - Dipper couldn’t place it right away, but there was something _wrong_ about them, other than the dark circles underneath. The boy’s gaze flickered to the empty space next to him, unbidden, before settling on Mabel again.

“No, I - I’m fine. Thanks.”

“I like your shoes! I see you’re a fan of teeth, hm? Me too! I’m even perfecting mine, look!” She flashed her braces at him eagerly.

The corner of his mouth quirked upward helplessly. “That’s nice….um, I was just…”

“Just what?” Dipper interjected, wanting to put a little distance between this new person and his sister. After all, this kid could be _anyone._ The last time he left Mabel alone with a boy with abnormally tall hair, he turned out to be…well… _Gideon._ “Just having a _conversation?_ ” He narrowed his eyes searchingly.

The boy swallowed hard, looking conflicted, before hopefully stammering “M-maybe…?”

How do you ‘maybe’ have a conversation? Dipper eyed him, and the boy set his jaw and stared right back determinedly, barely blinking, as if they were locked in contest.

Now Dipper saw what was so weird about his eyes - they weren’t _round_ , like a normal person’s should have been, but faceted like the cut of a diamond. It was so eerie and strangely hypnotic that for a moment he found himself speechless. Smiling quietly, Mabel rested her hand along his back and rubbed a soothing circle across his shoulder blades.

“I’m Mabel.” she said. “And _this_ silly goose is Dipper, my brother.”

“Norm…uh,” he stopped, unheeded, scowled briefly at the space beside him again, and corrected himself: “ _Norman._ ” He toyed with the watch anxiously. “I just, I heard you had an undead exhibit-“

“Oh you mean the _Zombie Bees!_ ” Mabel cried, tossing her arms above her head in the imitation of a ghost. “OooOOooo! Bumblebees from beyond the grave!”

Norman’s mouth twitched again. He looked like he was trying not to smile.

“This way! Follow me!” She waved her arms eagerly until Norman set down the watch awkwardly and fell into step at her side.

“The exhibit’s ten dollars.” Dipper mouthed to his twin awkwardly, keeping his eye on Norman, who was whispering something that sounded like “Two minutes, okay?” under the cover of their chatting voices.

“Dipper please.” she snapped her fingers at him. “It’s not an exhibit, it’s just one little piece, and…. _I’m not even done painting it._ ” she added in a whisper. “Would it kill you to let me get some feedback, huh?”

Dipper felt his face color slightly. Mabel had talent, and yes, most tourists adored the cute puns and clever splices, but this kid seemed a little too…smart for that.

The bulb above the exhibit flickered briefly as Norman bent to view it, casting an eerie shadow as Mabel hovered nearby. As expected, feedback in Norman’s case consisted entirely of polite observation. There was a displaced look of amusement on his face as he studied the craft, which consisted of a hollowed out beehive and fake, painted honeybees, all in various colors of rot.

“Legend says they prey on the flesh of _wasps._ ” Mabel said dreamily, curling her hands together beneath her chin. “What do you think?”

“What if you added wasp corpses?” Norman suggested in a voice far too sincere and innocent to be discussing insect death. There was a weird, geeky kind of light in his eyes as he looked the hive over. “Like, the wings could sit on the bottom, shredded.”

“ _Genius…_ ” Mabel whispered in awe.

“Hm.” Dipper said, narrowing his eyes again. Mabel’s crushes never sat well with him, even if they did seem more intelligent than the usual crew…

He thought that might be the last they’d see of Norman as they exchanged polite goodbyes. Some tourists were only in for the afternoon, and there was really no way of telling how long a new face might stick around. Mabel, thankfully, was not carrying on the way she did with her usual type of crush - in fact, she seemed as calm as could be. There were no new sweaters being knitted and not even a hint of a wistful sigh for the rest of the day.

She did, however, ruffle Dipper’s hair in a giddy, giggling sort of way before taking off to spice up her beehive exhibit.

“He was cute,” she said, “ _riiiiight?_ ”

He batted her off and she laughed, darting away. Dipper smiled weakly after her as the long, tangled train of her hair vanished around the corner and returned to find his book and immerse himself once again in reading.

And that, he thought, was that.

It wouldn’t be until tomorrow that he’d notice the display of gift-shop watches Norman had been fumbling with had all ceased to work.


	2. Chapter 2

“I don’t believe this,” Dipper groaned, picking helplessly through the line-up of still-faced watches. “They all just _stopped._ ”

Ever since Norman had picked through them, not a single once was ticking, regardless of what Dipper had tried to do to fix them. He combed through the wires, replaced the batteries, he even tried using some of the ‘good luck charms’ Mabel had found beneath her bed (consisting of four leaf clovers arranged in a inky circle.) But try as he might, nothing worked.

Dipper was far from satisfied. Mabel, on the other hand, seemed strangely amused about the whole thing.

(“You’re overreacting,” she told him.

“But he _did_ something to them! All of them just _mysteriously stopped_. You really think that’s just a coincidence?”

“Come on, Dip, it’s gift-store junk! It’s _Grunkle Stan’s_ gift store junk. Of course they’re gonna break!” a tricky look came across her face. “Why don’t you just ask Norman what happened? You know, like…”

And she proceeded to mimic the weak, awestruck expression that Dipper absolutely did _not_ have on his face yesterday while studying Norman’s odd, gray-blue irises.)

But maybe she was right. Maybe he was making a big deal out of nothing. After all, there hadn’t been a mystery about for at least a week - not that he had been looking for one, but. Still.

From behind the empty counter, Grunkle Stan plucked up a neon-colored watch by the wristband for closer inspection. The back had yet to be replaced, leaving the circuitry and loose battery exposed. “‘bout time these things gave out.” he agreed, unimpressed. “Wait…I got it!” He gave the little piece of tech an experimental shake. “Market them as time-traveling watches and double the price!”

“Grunkle Stan, these are _literally worthless._ ”

“Hmmmm. You’re right. _Triple_ the price.”

And really, he reflected, re-arranging the sad, sorry excuse for a gift shop display, he shouldn’t have expected anything greater. Mabel, bristling with her usual energy, had taken off for what Dipper assumed was going to be a couple minutes but was now stretching off into hours. A faint blanket of heat had settled over Gravity Falls in her absence, with the sun adopting a fiery intensity that caused it to resemble a glowing pumpkin in the sky.

Wendy had taken her place at the counter and promptly fallen asleep in her arms, leaving her vivid hair tangled across the polished surface in a heap. Dipper was just beginning to weigh the pros and cons of waking her up when he heard Mabel give a shriek from somewhere outside.

Snapping to attention and nearly knocking over the newly perfected display, he sprinted to the door, his heart lodging somewhere in his throat. “Mabel? _Mabel!_ ”

A brief peal of laughter could be heard trickling through the open window before Dipper slammed the front door open, cutting the noise short. His sister greeted him with wide, wild eyes, thrusting her hands sharply in front of her face, where her palms were piled with…

_…wasps._

Dipper gave a hoarse scream, scrambling back from her outstretched arms on instinct. A moment too late, he recognized the bugs for what they were: plastic. Mabel was giggling, jostling the bundle of fake insects gleefully. “Aren’t they _great?_ ”

“Don’t _scare_ me like that, Mabel!” God, his heart was still pounding.

“Sorry! We were just having fun.” She shifted the wasps into one palm to pluck one of the tiny plastic bodies between thumb and forefinger, tapping it playfully against her twin’s shoulder. “Boop! Boop, boop. I’m gonna sting you, Dippy!”

Dipper gave a weak laugh, swatting her away playfully. Then: “Wait…who’s _‘we?’_ ”

“Me and Norman!” She side-stepped over, revealing a familiar head of spiky hair kneeling down by Mabel’s beehive project on the patio. At the sound of his name, he glanced up and raised a hopeful hand in greeting.

Dipper couldn’t help but double-take - somehow, he hadn’t expected to see him again, or at least not so soon.

“Hi.” said Norman, looking conveniently harmless with spots of glue and plastic wasp wings sticking to him.

“Hi.” Dipper squeaked, grasping his sister suddenly and strongly by the arm. She leaned against him casually, politely pretending not to notice the way his voice cracked as he whispered. “ _What is he doing here?_ ”

“He’s helping me with the Zombie Bees, silly!”

Dipper surveyed the scene - her patchwork blanket strewn on the floor to create a working space, dead plastic wasps scattered around, some painted and some shredded up artistically. Their old boombox was balanced haphazardly on the railing, silent as a stone.

“Does none of this look like a date to you?” he bit accusingly.

“Pfft, will you relax?” Mabel whispered back, her tongue between her teeth. “He’s just helping me! …and also, if it _was_ a date, I wouldn’t need your approval, bucko….but it’s not! Me and Norman are just pals, right? RIGHT NORMAN?”

There was no way Norman could have heard everything they whispered, but he gave an uncertain nod regardless. A strange, sad look had crept on his his face as the twins whispered, one that Dipper recognized quickly as defeat. There was a definite resignation to him, in the slump of his shoulders and cast of his eyes.

It was as if he _expected_ them to be talking behind his back.

A ripple of shame spread through him.

Maybe he _was_ being too harsh.

Maybe Norman was just some nice, well-meaning kid, and Dipper was jumping to conclusions and getting caught up over the whole watch-breaking…thing. Which, now that he thought about it, seemed really, really trivial.

“I’m gonna get more paint.” Mabel announced, leading her brother forward by the arm. Norman focused intently on the beehive project as they approached, measuring out miniature cuts with a pair of scissors. “Why don’t you two get started on the wings in the meantime?”

She balanced precariously on one foot to switch the boombox on. A familiar tune began to blare sweetly over their heads. “Hehe… _music_ ….” she chortled innocently. “Anyway, be right back!”

And with that, Mabel sprinted back inside, the hard clattering of the door against it’s frame making both of them jump in their places.

Dipper lowered himself awkwardly to sit on the opposite end of the blanket. “Um, so…” he cleared his throat. “…Norman….”

“Here.” Norman said, nudging something metal in his direction, “We’re cutting holes in the wings.” And wow, his voice was really, really _quiet_. Somehow without Mabel there to toss in her own peppy comments, it seemed that much more obvious.

Dipper reached for the metal thing without taking his eyes off the other boy and found it on his third try. It was a hole puncher, cool to the touch except for the handles, which had been warmed by Norman’s palms. Between them, the boombox continued to flare, carrying the bright, clear voice of a man singing about streetlight people and midnight trains to anywhere.

“Do you live here?” Norman still wasn’t looking up.

“Yea— ah, no, we’re just here for the summer.” Dipper said hurriedly, taking off an entire wasp wing while trying to clip the edges. He frowned at the ruined thing disapprovingly - Mabel was the artistic one, not him.

“Oh. Okay.” the sound of scissors and hole punchers was easily drowned out recorded guitars and drums. The artist was a favorite of Mabel’s, a radio tune played far too often…and…was it him, or was the volume growing _louder?_

“There’s a glen not too far from here…” Or maybe Norman’s voice was just getting _softer._ “Do you know anything about it…?”

“The place with the poison ivy?” Dipper poised the hole puncher over another wing. “Why?”

“I don’t know. I thought maybe something bad happened there.”

Dipper froze mid-clip.

Now _that_ was an _awfully suspicious thing to say_. And in Gravity Falls, where mythical creatures were crawling within every square mile, suspicion wasn’t exactly rare. That was the sort of thing you said when a supernatural creature was lurking and you weren’t quite sure of how to identify it. Or even when a campside story seemed a little too familiar, or a little too close. “Wh…did you see something?”

Norman looked up, and his strange, sharp-edged eyes were wide all around with guilt. “No.”

The lie in his face was as clear as day.

Dipper leaned forward, eager. So there _was_ a mystery here! “Are you sure? Ah, I mean, let’s say you _did_ see something, would it be a tall something? Uh…hypothetically. Did it look alive? Did it have talons? Glowing eyes? How many arms did it have?”

“I didn’t see anything.”

“It’s okay, you can tell me - I, heh, I know it _sounds_ weird, but I’ve been there before, and this place is _crawling_ with impossible things,” he rubbed at this throat again, trying to ignore the rapidly climbing, crackling pitch. “Gravity Falls is just _like_ that. Believe me, I’ve seen enough gnomes and werewolves and witches-” Norman stiffened a fraction more - “-and just the other week we caught a demon with _hypno-eyes-_ “

“ _I didn’t see anything!_ ” Norman repeated harshly, and at the exact moment that his voice took on a different quality, the boombox made an electric sizzle of a sound and zapped mid-chorus into a burst of static noise. Soon enough a new, melodic guitar picked lazily across the air, threaded with the harshness of radio-space snow. ' _you lost your place in line again_ ', sang a slightly-distorted but soulful voice, ' _what a pi-i-ity, you never seem to wanna dance anymore…._ '

Dipper blinked.

Across from him, Norman was rubbing the back of his neck, eyes darting across the blanket skittishly. “Ah,” he laughed forcibly, “You know how some old radios skip? Haha…”

“Riiight.” he agreed, cautious, and after a beat, the soulful voice dissolved with another sharp ‘ _zzzzst!_ ’ sound into an urban, harmonic chorus. A distinct male voice laced through the air, singing in a far-away echo.

“P-probably just the signal…”

“Right.” Dipper repeated, staring at the other boy with rapt fascination. The sound of footsteps, likely Mabel’s, began to break through as the radio artist crooned ‘ _bring me back to fallen town, where someone is still alive_ ’

Norman’s face was getting very pink. “I’ll just turn that off.” he whispered.

“I - I’ll get it-“

“N-no, I-“

“Guess what guess what!” squeaked a newly-arrived Mabel suddenly, dashing to a stop at the foot of the blanket as the two boys clambered to turn off the noise. “I got acryllic paints and puffy paints and paint with glitter inside! Just in case you want glittery wasp bodies.” She cocked an eyebrow at their positions, clicking her tongue. “Hey now, don’t fight, there’s enough music for everyone!”

They each presented a nervous smile as she crossed to inspect the beehive, turning her head this way and that. “Not bad, not bad. I’m gonna have this sucker back up by tomorrow!”

“That’s great.” Norman said faintly. And on the heels of that: “I should go, I guess…”

“Or, _or_ ,” Dipper broke in, one hand still glued to the boombox, “You could hang around while we fix up the exhibit. Just, you know, to see.”

They regarded each other for a frightful moment - Dipper racking his brains for any information about glens or radio static from the six-fingered journal, Norman swallowing thickly and apparently trying to discern if he was being dissected or welcomed.

“I guess I could…” he admitted at last.

From the sidelines, Mabel broke into a brilliant, toothy grin that dominated a great deal of her face.

It was nearly five PM when they headed back inside, Dipper with the beehive craft carefully in tow, Mabel with an arm thrown happily across their backs. The heavy summer sun had settled down into hues of rose and apricot orange, streaming broad watercolor stripes across the sky.

None of them were near enough to notice when the boombox gave one last, exhausted whine before fizzing out completely.


End file.
